Week in Review: Higher case acceptance; plus hard-tissue lasers and a plan for Calif.

Dear DrBicuspid Member,

What's the biggest obstacle to patient case acceptance? Is it money or insurance? Is it scheduling issues? Maybe patients' lack of understanding about how important oral healthcare is for their overall health? Or maybe it is none of those things. Practice management consultant Jen Butler has the answer. Learn more here.

Also this week on DrBicuspid.com, hard-tissue lasers have been praised as a replacement to drills for basic restorative procedures, which is why researchers decided to take a closer look at how one type of laser affected dentin's physical and chemical properties. Read more here.

After two years of planning, California has finally offered a look at what the state's oral health plan may be like. The state's dental director, Jayanth Kumar, DDS, MPH, outlined broad concepts and frameworks for the plan in the August 2017 edition of the Journal of the California Dental Association. Learn more here.

There was a time in the not-so-distant past when taking radiographs as part of a dental examination was commonplace. However, with fears about radiation and changing insurance policies, U.S. practices took fewer images in 2016 than in any recent year. Alitta Boechler of Sikka Software looks at the data. Read more here.

In Alitta Boechler's latest Data Trends column above, practice management consultant Teresa Duncan highlights the roles technology and insurance are playing in your practice. She notes that digital technology has not only changed how you image your patients but also how you bill for these images. How technology's evolution will change both the practice of dentistry and your practice is a fascinating question that we'll continue to follow.